


In the cold dark earth

by spiteandmalice



Category: Burn This - Wilson
Genre: Drug Use, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 07:36:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19807678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiteandmalice/pseuds/spiteandmalice
Summary: Larry thinks that Anna and Pale are like the sea: the tide comes crashing in, smashing rocks against rocks, tumbling millions of grains of sand over each other until everything is swept clean in the current.The tide is currently out.





	In the cold dark earth

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Thrasirshall for beta-reading! 

Larry thinks that Anna and Pale are like the sea: the tide comes crashing in, smashing rocks against rocks, tumbling millions of grains of sand over each other until everything is swept clean in the current.

The tide is currently out.

Anna is on her way back from teaching in Boston, Pale is sitting in a scrap of silk in the living room, hair slicked back and wet, about to take a bump of coke off- 

Larry's taking his coat off when he sees it.

"Don't fucking snort coke on my books Pale, Jesus."

Pale looks up.

“Where did you come from?”

“Work. Why are you here? Anna’s not back yet.”

“I wanted to see her. Uh, I guess she didn't leave on the best of terms with me last night.”

Larry sighs and goes to make them both a drink.

“And I suppose that means you thought it was a good idea to come here, take off all your clothes, shower and lie in wait.”

Pale shrugs, eyes darting back to the coke laid out.

“Take it already.”

Pale snorts it, shakes his head like a dog. He takes the brandy Larry passes and Larry toes his shoes off while Pale mumbles. 

“Did you ever, you know.”

Larry sips his drink. “Did I ever  _ what _ .”

“With Robbie.”

“Use your words, Pale. Did I ever  _ what  _ with Robbie.”

“Fuck 'im.” 

There's a long silence after those two words and Larry wishes he had a cigarette right now. 

“Are you seriously asking if I had sex with your brother?”

Pale shrugs minutely, a short, tight gesture that Larry can't follow; is he shrugging like that because of the embarrassment of talking about your dead gay brother's sex life or is he really high and trying not to seem too high or-?

Larry puts him out of his misery.

“No, Robbie and I never slept together. He only had eyes for Dom for most of the time I knew him anyway. Work took up the rest of his time. You do know not all gay guys who know each other have to fuck?”

Pale blinks, scrunches his nose.

“Why not? I wanna fuck the women I meet, the hot ones at least. Robbie was...hot. I guess. I guess in a fruit way. Like, he wasn't ugly, ya know what I'm gettin' at here? We got good genes, my family.”

“I have not a fucking clue what you’re trying to say.” Larry picks his bag up. “Okay conversation over, I'm going to bed.”

Pale stretches a hand out towards Larry, then drops it back to his bared thigh.

Larry raises an eyebrow.

“I suggest you take your drink and sleep it off in Anna's room. You can have your inevitable shouting match and make-up sex in there when she returns so I can have my breakfast out here in peace tomorrow.” 

The hand clenches into a fist.

“Shut the fuck up, fa- you fuck.”

“Were you about to call me a fag?”

Pale won't meet his eyes, knocks back most of his drink, drops the glass onto the table.

“No.”

“I think you were. This conversation is done. Get the fuck out of my apartment. You can wait on the stairs.”

Larry remembers when Anna stood up to him, that Pale was wild, scary, animalistic. 

This Pale is pathetic- a shadow, like when he first came here, when he had splintered apart from Robbie’s death.

Maybe he's still splintered, the cracks have just gotten wide enough to peer through. 

Pale snatches at Larry, manages to snag the sleeve of Larry’s sweater and pulls him in, his other hand firm on Larry’s back. Larry glances down and he can see Pale’s hard, the silk of the robe pushed aside, a bulge evident in his black cotton briefs.

Larry allows himself to be tugged forward, not sure if he’s giving in, or giving up. He braces himself for Storm Pale to hit, one hand on the back of the couch, the other on Pale’s chest, pushing him away. 

“I don't want to suck your cock Pale. There’s at least sixty in the Village I’ve yet to get through that are actually attached to gay guys.” 

“Yeah, you do. You want it.” Pale tilts his chin up, challenging.

Larry hates how he likes it.

“I really don't.”

“Then why you still talkin' to me? Sitting on my lap?” Pale curls a large hand around Larry’s bicep, and the size contrast makes Larry’s mouth go dry. Fuck. 

“I don't even like you, as a human being, you know. I don’t want you as a lover.”

“I know.”

“Anna is the closest friend I have in the world. I love her.”

Pale attempts a smile, and it's a sad feeble thing, like a wilted flower shoved into a cup of water to try and save it.

“I know. Me too. Me too.”

“Then you’ll understand why I don’t want to do this to her.”

There’s a soft clunk of the door being closed, and Anna’s curious voice asking “Don’t want to do what to me?” 

Larry shakes Pale’s hand off his arm. 

“Doll, Pale and I were just talking.” 

Anna looks between the two of them, but she doesn’t seem angry. 

“I believe you, love. He’s not mine, anyway.”

At that comment Pale’s shifting forward towards the table, so Larry climbs off the couch, off Pale. He sits awkwardly on the floor next to the couch, not sure if he should explain further, have another drink, go to bed, climb back onto Pale’s lap-

Pale’s putting out another bump of coke on the cover of Larry’s poor suffering first edition, and Anna is suddenly lit up by the open fridge in the dark of the kitchen as pours herself a glass of wine. In the light, she looks every bit the angel Larry will not ruin. She’s the only good thing in his life right now, work is turning him into a whore for the commission, his friends are either paired off buying artisanal pottery together or at demos for ACT UP. He’s got nothing else. No-one else.

Larry’s always the bridesmaid, never the bride and he was fine with that. People spoke of ‘Robbie and Dom, the lovely couple’ and ‘Robbie and Anna, the wonderful dancers’. Anna and Pale had become ‘Anna and Pale, the trainwreck waiting to happen’ and now here he was in the middle ‘Anna and Larry and Pale, the trainwreck actually occurring.’

Larry wasn’t jealous of Dom and Robbie, not really, only in the vaguest sense of being lonely and that Robbie had the toned body of a young Greek god and often went without his shirt right there in the living room and Dom was the sweetest guy around as well as being hilarious. 

Pale looks down at him, face serious, lips pressed together as if he’s trying to hold back the words. When he speaks Larry knows the words aren’t for him, but for Anna, still frozen in the harsh fridge light.

“I don't try to break her heart or nothin', it just happens and that hurts me too. I love her. I  _ love  _ her.”

Larry looks up and it's Robbie’s face looking back at him, but it's Pale’s large hands that cradle his face, a wide hand used to spanning plates, carrying boxes of produce, not Robbie’s long elegant dancer fingers Larry used to watch chop herbs on Sunday mornings while Dom made eggs next to him and Larry and Anna curled together under a blanket on the sofa to hide from their hangovers.

Pale spreads his legs and Larry remembers Anna's dance, how masculine and strong the part of Pale was in that production. Unyielding.

It's the same here, broad hips and thighs pointing to manual labour, twenty years of striding up and down a restaurant floor, the kitchen, the meat markets, fish markets, not the muscle of a dancer.

Larry looks over at Anna, who nods once, closes the fridge door and becomes a shadow in the dark kitchen. Pale’s scrubbing at his eyes and Jesus, the last thing Larry needs is Pale crying tonight.

He reaches for Pale’s briefs, sends a curse up to the universe for being weak and stupid. Pale lifts his hips so Larry can tug them down, and Pale’s got a nice thick dick, and the tip is already wet for him.

Well, Larry hopes it's wet for him, but who the fuck knows. He shuffles forward on his knees and opens his mouth, and looks up as he goes down. 

Anna’s standing behind Pale now, both hands wrapped around her wine glass, fingers pale with tension, smudging the condensation on the glass. 

Pale’s vocal as usual. “Oh that's it baby, like  _ that _ .”

Larry pulls off with what he hopes is an indignant pop.

“If you keep talking, I'm going to stop.”

Pale mimes zipping his lips shut.

Larry starts again. Maybe this is how he grieves, he thinks, on his knees like this, not in prayer, but supplication. 

Pale smells like Anna’s shower gel which is disconcerting, but he groans like a man, digs his big thick fingers into Larry's curls and pulls. It's a little rough which Larry should have anticipated, after being the voyeur to Pale and Anna far too many times. 

Pales mumbling again, saying  _ baby  _ and  _ yes  _ and  _ so good  _ as Larry sucks him off and Larry ignores him, keeps going. 

Anna is too careless with her body sometimes, pushes it too far in practice, stretches herself that little bit further every time. It's what made her a great dancer, that willingness to bleed for her art. Larry wishes she would be less careless with her heart.

She finishes the wine and puts the glass down, never taking her eyes off Larry’s mouth. 

Larry feels like a slut, even though he’s fully clothed in slacks, shirt, sweater and socks while Pale wears nothing but silk and his own sweat.

Pale comes with Anna’s hands on his shoulders, rubbing, reassuring. He presses a kiss to one delicate wrist and she presses one back into his temple.

Larry stands on shaky legs, brushes the dust from his knees. 

Pale hesitantly reaches for Larry's fly and Larry laughs, the sound is harsh and too loud to his ears, even in this large space.

“Oh doll, don't. I'm going to bed. I don't need a pity jerk to round off this night.”

Larry swigs the last mouthful of brandy from Pale’s glass on the table, swishes it once around his mouth and swallows.

Pale is still looking at Larry's mouth, softening dick still hanging out.

“Apologize to her. She’s forgiven you already, she just needs to hear it.”

He’s reached the kitchen door when Pale croaks out.

“I never told him I loved him. He was my little brother and I ain't never been there for him. And now. Now it's too late.”

Larry turns around, sees this giant of a man looking small and lost in the cavern of their living room, sees the pain of ignoring his queer brother while he was alive, and the pain of not being able to ignore him when dead and he feels sorry for Pale. 

Robbie is in a grave but Pale might as well be too. He meets Anna’s eyes and sees the same look there, sorrow and anger swirling. Larry hopes Pale and Anna can dig themselves out together, scramble up every inch of the six-foot hole of their grief they have fallen into. 

All Larry can do is offer a hand to pull them up.

“See you in the morning. New day tomorrow.”

Larry’s not sure which of them he’s talking to.


End file.
